Andrew Wheeler wanted to perform in the Vancouver premiere of playwright Michael Healey’s Proud after he read the controversial play’s “smart” and “rollicking” script.
But playing a prime minister that’s clearly modelled after Stephen Harper isn’t easy.
“He does seem to have a definite lack of personal charm and dynamism,” Wheeler said of the Conservative PM. “That’s intriguing to play as an actor because you have to find ways of suggesting that social discomfort and yet still make the scenes as dynamic as possible. You don’t want to play a boring character or someone that’s not interesting to listen to... Charisma is not something that comes terribly naturally to him.”
But that lack of charm hasn’t kept the Jessie-award winning actor from falling in love with the character of the PM. “I’m really liking Stephen Harper right now,” Wheeler said.
“He knows that he’s seen as a sack of potatoes, he knows that his public image takes a hit, but he, in the play, sees himself largely as an economist who has a particular agenda for downsizing government,” Wheeler explained. “That means cutting some programs and he doesn’t care if people are not on board with that, that’s what he sees his mandate as being.”
Wheeler, who grew up in former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s Montreal riding with a mother who supported the NDP and a father who was a Liberal, said it has been interesting to view the country from a right-wing perspective.
He’s held a passing interest in politics since he was a kid, but preparing for his latest role has constituted “a primer on Canadian politics, what the Privy Council is and how things work legislatively.”
Proud imagines a different outcome to the last federal election. The Tories have swept Quebec with a huge majority in the political satire. One of the new members of parliament is a single mother who managed a St-Hubert rotisserie restaurant, Quebec’s version of Swiss Chalet.
“Basically, the play is the confrontation of these two very different characters, him being a man who’s somewhat obsessed with control and who doesn’t have a great deal of élan and free spirit to him, and this young female MP from Quebec who has no filter and who expresses her opinions, who has no experience in politics and is up to the challenge,” Wheeler said of the character played by Emmelia Gordon (Dissolve, Progressive Polygamists).
Craig Erickson (Twelfth Night, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) plays the PM’s Machiavellian chief of staff and go-between, providing audiences a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how government operates, akin to the Netflix series House of Cards.
Donna Spencer, artistic director of the Firehall Arts Centre, directs the production.
Healey wrote Proud for Tarragon Theatre as part of a trilogy of shows while he was writer-in-residence. But the Toronto theatre company controversially dumped Proud over alleged concerns the play would be deemed libelous and alienate government funders. Healey later produced the show in Toronto and then Ottawa and a third production recently closed in Victoria.
Wheeler doesn’t see anything libelous in Proud.
“In fact, I think it shows Stephen Harper in an oddly empathetic light,” said the actor who has appeared in nine seasons at Bard on the Beach and played Claudius, Mark Antony and Macbeth.
“As Stephen Harper says, debate is good, debate is what we want,” Wheeler said. “We want people to become engaged politically because people who become engaged in anything in life find that life has more meaning and a life with more meaning is a happier life.”
Proud runs April 5 to 26 at the Firehall Arts Centre. Details at firehallartscentre.ca.
